CAP 25 Final Products

the pastor of disaster

CAP 25 has been a marathon! Three starters, enormous questions to answer along the way, from the power of Merciless on an offensive Pokemon to the questions of how much is too much for using Galvanize, to "what the heck are we going to do with Water/Bug?" Whatever the end result of the CAP 25 Pokemon in the CAP metagame, we learned a lot through discussion, both about abilities and how they are used and about the CAP process and community itself!

Reflecting on the process, I think we faced three major challenges, with varying degrees of success.

The first was that of the scope of this project: our Framework charged us to make three Pokemon, and that meant doing every stage three times simultaneously. I thought we managed that reasonably well, considering the difficulty involved, with one issue: 25f, Smokomodo, at times utterly dominated discussion, choking out 25g and w palpably. This was especially obvious on Discord, where asking a direct 25g question would lead to ten to twenty lines of discussion, after which the floodgates of 25f controversy would reopen. I think all three CAP 25 starters turned out well from a competitive standpoint (though Smokomodo is, I believe, the weakest of the three), but from a process standpoint I wish we had spread the discussion out better across the three.

The second challenge was process order and the threat of poll jumping, a major issue for a concept that focused so heavily on the Ability Stage to define the finished product. (Poll Jumping Redacted) became almost a meme, but I thought we wrestled well through our constraints while staying focused on producing a quality product--we had some really good Typing discussion, for instance, and I am proud of the community for working with what we could do and asking a lot of the hard questions in terms of competitive balance--how much is too much and how much is enough. I think the Typing Stage really intensely impacted how the Ability Stage played out, so we definitely had a coherent process, even with the difficulties.

Our third major challenge was differentiation. Considering what Pokemon has done before with starters, picking abilities that did not lead to paths already traveled was a major issue. It was the largest driving force behind what we did with Caribolt in particular, but Snaelstrom also ended up as an extremely competitively distinctive Pokemon. CAP has always enjoyed the novel for its own sake, but the difficultly of finding unprecedented things to explore while also following specific precents (i.e. starters) was a fine line to walk. This is the challenge I feel we handled the best. It is too early to say whether all three CAP 25 starters will hit the sweet spot of viability, but I am certain that we can agree that all three are unique.

As a closing note, I am blown away once more by the astounding talent of our artists and spriters: you are the heart and soul of the CAP Project, and this was your finest hour. To produce so much utterly sublime art while accounting for process oddities and having to do three designs at once is nothing short of...well, astounding.

Congratulations, CAP! I am proud to present to you Smokomodo, Snaelstrom and Caribolt!

Banned deucer.

Congratulations, everyone, for getting CAP25 finished! Also, happy 11th CAP birthday!
CAP25 is very dear to me and I know we all worked very hard with each of the starters. Lots of discussion, :tyranitarwurmple: and, above all that, I feel like we have developed a bond during this process. I'm glad to have experienced that! :)
Now, we just gotta wait for the playtest!

We did it! This was the first CAP I actually participated in after watching for so so so long (Mollux bby I'm lookin at you). I do wish that we had gone a little further with Smokomodo sine Fire/Ground technician is always fun, but all in all I'm super duper excited to use these guys on the ladder and in the inevitable playtest tour. I'll probably be making a video or two on these guys too, so that's something to look forward to if you're interested in that kind of thing.

We have the technology.

Back in 2011, I was as bright-eyed as many of you are now about this weird, but exciting Create-A-Pokemon Project hosted on Smogon. Their latest creation, Tomohawk, looked absolutely stunning, from its amazing design by Cartoons to its concept of momentum. Its concept (written by another CAP legend, Korski) was all about exploring momentum in competitive matches, and Tomohawk certainly did this with Intimidate, Prankster Haze, Prankster Roost and entry hazards. And this phenomenal project was headed by none other than CAP super mod reachzero.

Fast forward SEVEN years, and reachzero is still rocking it in the CAP forums. From competing in tournaments to being one of the best voices of reason in concepts, he still inspires me to lead by doing instead of telling. As an extremely relatable guy, reach has taught me so much personally about how to make better Pokemon and better posts.

For you newer users, I want to make you understand how legendary of a feat this was for reachzero to Topic Lead this project. I don't think that these three Pokemon could have been created so successfully under the leadership of any other human on these forums. His combination of active leadership, competitive knowledge, and project foresight should be the aspiration of any new user. Post frequently, battle even more frequently, and listen even more frequently. It doesn't surprise me one bit that we'll be playing with three new, (likely) balanced, and most importantly, fun Pokemon over the next few days. It's not surprising because reachzero has been doing this for over half a decade with extreme success. So thank you, reach, for some amazing years with some amazing Pokemon. Thanks for making CAP25 a rousing success -- here's to 25 more!

Congratulations everybody! I'm so glad to finally have been able to participate in this legendary project. I've been a long time lurker at various points in the past few years, coming in and out to check out the wacky creations being made by this exclusive competitive community. I was so pleased to find out that all my fears were unfounded, and that everyone was so supportive and welcoming. Makes me regret taking my sweet time! Can't wait for CAP26!

^-^

It really was a pleasure to participate in CAP 25, and I thank you all for taking a chance on me and letting me lead a stage for the first time ever! I've learned a lot and I can't wait to see everyone having fun (or getting salty) with the new mons!

It was a lot of fun to participate in the early stages of the process, and it was especially exciting to be part of the celebration CAP. So happy for the art winners and many of those who didn't manage to beat the competition.

Knows the great enthusiasms

Congratulations to everyone that contributed so much time and effort to this massive celebration project! I think reachzero summarized things beautifully, pointing out positives and negatives. CAP 25 might have been able to be better, had we done this or that -- but it also could have been much worse. It was a fun and interesting ride, and I love the three new pokemon we have added to CAP! I am glad the community jumped into the great unknown on this project and gave it their all. Special thanks to all the leaders, submitters, and influential posters that contributed to CAP 25! I think this was a great adventure, and hopefully we all learned something along the way, both about the CAP project and the game of Pokemon. Here's looking forward to the next 25 projects in Create-A-Pokemon!

As everybody else said or will say, congratulations to everyone involved in the project. I'm pretty satisfied with the result overall, even though I'm a bit worried about the viability of Smokomodo, my favorite design-wise out of the three, due to how restrictive we were with its movepool.

Still, I think it turned out very well and I look forward to contribute to the next CAP. By the way, I think that creating multiple CAPs at the same time with an etablished link (3 starters in this case) was a very good idea as it allows our metagame to grow in a more significant manner in my opinion, so I hope we'll do it again, sooner or later.

Happy Belated Birthday CAP!
Now that these mons are coming out I have to resurrect myself into the CAP metagame for the Playtest. I will be using seperate teams built around these CAPs and will try to show how these mons can be utilized best. Congrats to everyone who participated in what looks like another great CAP Mon (or, I guess Mons this this time).

Smokomodo is able to run HP Ice because of Technician to KO Landorus and 2HKO Zygarde. Caribolt's 77 SpA may seem quite week, but not when it uses it to fire off STAB Boomburst with an effective BP of 168 because of the Galvanize boost. And Snaelstrom will likely predominately run special attacks on its defensive sets due to the utility Scald provides, though it also has the ability to go mixed as Leech Life can be useful for extra recovery. I think you'll be seeing a lot of mixed sets on these mons.

I'm so grateful to have been able to contribute to the discussion of these awesome CAPmons. This was my first CAP and I want to thank all the mods who were so patient with me and forgiving of my many mistakes. Smokomodo is clearly the badass of the three starters, although I have a soft spot for Caribolt as I do all Grass-types. Also, my sister is an avid Showdown player and she thinks Snaelstrom is adorable. We grew up creating fakemons for fun and my inner child can't get over the fact that Smogon is a place where that is a real possibility, thanks to all of your hard work. I want to give a special shout out to the 3D Modeling Team: y'all are ridiculously talented and amazingly efficient, and your work is sublime.